Thursday, October 13, 2011

Kimbrel, Hosmer, Hellickson Selected As Top Rookies From BBA

Craig Kimbrel of the Atlanta Braves easily won the Baseball Bloggers Alliance’s Willie Mays Award for top rookie in the National League. The American League award, though, was a much different story.Kansas City first baseman Eric Hosmer and Tampa Bay pitcher Jeremy Hellickson both received 67 points in American League voting, creating the first tie for an award since the Alliance began handing out the honors in 2009. Hosmer received nine first place votes, while Hellickson garnered eight. Rounding out the top three in the AL was Mark Trumbo, the first baseman for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.In the National League, Kimbrel, who set a rookie record for saves as Atlanta’s closer, outpaced his teammate, first baseman Freddie Freeman, by thirty points. Kimbrel received 65 points, including 11 of 16 first place selections. Washington Nationals second baseman Danny Espinosa was a distant third.The complete voting results are as follows (first place votes in parenthesis):American LeagueJeremy Hellickson, Tampa Bay (8) 67Eric Hosmer, Kansas City (9) 67Mark Trumbo, Los Angeles of Anaheim (3) 27Michael Pineda, Seattle (3) 23Desmond Jennings, Tampa Bay 7Ivan Nova, New York 7Brett Lawrie, Toronto (1) 5Dustin Ackley, Seattle 4Zach Britton, Baltimore 3Alexi Ogando, Texas 3Jordan Walden, Los Angeles of Anaheim 2Chris Sale, Chicago 1National LeagueCraig Kimbrel, Atlanta (11) 65Freddie Freeman, Atlanta (3) 35Danny Espinosa, Washington (1) 17Vance Worley, Philadelphia (1) 10Wilson Ramos, Washington 5Darwin Barney, Chicago 1Brandon Beachy, Atlanta 1Dillon Gee, New York 1The Baseball Bloggers Alliance was formed in the fall of 2009 to encourage cooperation and collaboration between baseball bloggers of all major league teams as well as those that follow baseball more generally. As of this writing, the organization consists of 316 blogs spanning all 30 major league squads as well as general baseball writing.The BBA is organized under a similar structure as the Baseball Writers of America, where blogs that follow the same team are combined into “chapters” and only two votes from the chapter on an award are counted. The blog chapters that are focused on general baseball were allowed two votes as well, which they could use both on the same league or split between the two leagues.Chapters generally followed one of two methods when casting their ballot. Either representatives of the chapter were given the ballots for voting or a “group ballot” was posted, accounting for both of their votes.Notably, though the Alliance’s awards come out well before their official counterparts, the BBA selections have matched those of the Baseball Writers of America in all but two instances in the past two years. This, of course, does not include the Goose Gossage Award that is exclusive to the BBA.Ballots are posted on the respective blogs and for this award, were tabulated on a 5-3-1 point scale for first through third place. In the interest of transparency, links are given below for the ballots. Chapter affiliation is in parenthesis. Those chapters that decided on the group method are noted with an asterisk.American LeagueBaltimore Sports and Life (Baltimore)Baseball Is My Boyfriend (Texas)*The Blue Jay Hunter (Toronto)Boston Red Thoughts (Boston)*Camden Crazies (Baltimore)Contract Year (Oakland)*Detroit Tigers Scorecard Blog (Detroit)The Flagrant Fan (General)Infield Fly (Toronto)Kings of Kauffman (Kansas City)*Lady At The Bat (New York)Misc. Baseball (History)North Dakota Twins Fan (Minnesota)Old English D (Detroit)The Rays Rant (Tampa Bay)Seattle Mariners Musings (Seattle)The Tribe Daily (Cleveland)*Twins Trivia (Minnesota)Victoria Seals Baseball Blog (Other)National LeagueAppy Astros (Houston)Bernie’s Crew (Milwaukee)*Blog Red Machine (Cincinnati)Cincinnati Reds Blog (Cincinnati)Dugger Sports (Philadelphia)The Eddie Kranepool Society (New York)*The Flagrant Fan (General)Misc. Baseball (History)RetroSimba (St. Louis)Rockies Woman (Colorado)Victoria Seals Baseball Blog (Other)Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke? (Pittsburgh)*Prior Winners:2010: Neftali Feliz, Texas; Buster Posey, San Francisco2009: Andrew Bailey, Oakland; Andrew McCutchen, PittsburghThe official website of the BBA is located atbaseballbloggersalliance.wordpress.com. The BBA can be found on Twitter by the handle @baseballblogs and by the hashmark #bbba. For more information, contact Daniel Shoptaw at founder@baseballbloggersalliance.com.